kac

The park is close by to the landing point of the city I am in, considered the oldest part of the city 1636. I doubt it is that old but there are a few old churches around and it might be from one of them. OR it could be a piece of junk someone lost after picking it up from a flea market hehe.

It is silver, maybe not 925 but since it was sand cast there might have been some contamination that got on the surface in some areas. Iron jump ring doesn't seem to be plated. No marks doesn't always mean anything, it could have been made from a small maker. Still a cool find since it was right next to a metal fence, probably why others had missed it. The park I was at has a path that follows the original path that passed through an old farm field. Sometime in the 1940's they turned it into a baseball diamond. Other BB diamonds in the same park vary in age, couple I had picked up an 1877 sitting liberty 2" in the sand and a few 1906 indian heads. Buffalos I pulled from there are in rough shape and very hard to read.

What detector did you use to find that VW? ?

I have found a bit of small earings with my Tejon while out coin shooting. It does pick up better on small bb sized stuff than my AT Pro. Probably the coil has a lot to do with it. Need a nice day and get it outdoors to do an air test because inside I am picking up pipes, cabinets etc and it gets chattery. Indoor test I had a small earing that picked up at 9 1/2" Really thin gold plate ring almost like a wire rang in 10 1/2 on the side and 9 or so on edge. I have a beefy 14k gold ring and a 925 ring about the same size. Gold ring 12" on side, 11" on edge Silver ring 13 1/2" on side, 10 1/2" on edge I set the sensitivity on the regular max and not the overload which will add an inch or so on depth. Most cases the absolute max sensitivity gets unstable around here as some the parks out here have under ground wires and irrigation pipes. I also had the machine in vco (all metal) mode. I think a concentric coil with a small center and large diameter overall will get you good depth/discrimination combination. Maybe that is why the some the Whites and Tesoros do well with small targets? I have become more of a fan of the concentrics over dd. Would be nice if other manufacturers adapted these coil designs to their machines. I would snag one for my AT in a heart beat and hit some the swim holes around here.

Found this next to a fence in a local ball field about 8-10" down. It rang in as silver and has no tarnish so I am guessing it is pretty pure. Back has no maker marks and shows a small pebble finish so it was originally sand cast or delft clay. The symmetry isn't perfect so it was hand made or at least the original pattern was. Anyone have any info they may know on this such as approx. age etc? The jump ring is iron, wild guess is it may had had a leather cord.

Looks like it might have got caught into a piece of machinery, maybe some gears from farm equipment? A bullet might bend it but wouldn't take a piece out because lead is too soft. Depleted uranium rounds might do that but doubt anyone is shooting a 22 with that hehe.

I had a bounty hunter going back to the early/mid 90's. Not a bad machine but lacked features back then. I would suggest a machine you can use for general purpose such as the Garrett AT Pro. It wiil do great on relics, fresh water wading, excellent for coin shooting in parks and can handle salt but will take some practice with ground balancing. The AT Pro is really well built. I had purchased an aftermarket LiPo battery pack around $80 or so that gives me well over 40 hours run time with no fade in performance. I also picked up the Nel Big coil for it which is a really nice coil that goes incredibly deep it tends to be way too heavy to swing all day. I use the Nel big on the dunes and can hear beer cans 3'+ down in dry sand, hear typical pocket change at more than a foot. The big coil actually does really good in the wet sand, less chattery than the dry but drags way too much to be in the surf with.

Having an AT Pro for a few years now I find as a solid and reliable general purpose machine. It works really well in lakes, ponds, rivers. The VDI depth is not always that accurate but I assume other machines in it's class are similar. The sensitivity to silver is outstanding but gold and nickels will have a tight range (vdi 51-53) so take your time if you run into a handful of square tabs and let the machine lock in on the target. My only beef with the Garret machines is I am not a big fan of their coils. Stock DD is adequate and their concentric Rx is too large to get good target separation. I did get a Nel Big for the machine for the big open fields and beach which seems to have a more stable signal but the coil is heavy so after a season of swinging the big coil your one arm may be double the size of the other. The new AT Max is the next generation of this machine with wireless headphones which IMO are useless if you plan on dunking the machine as wireless don't work under water. Bang for the buck if you can find one on sale it's worth snagging.

TY!

I found this over the summer with my Tejon. Rang in at the nickels / gold range really loud. Weighs 4g. Unusually heavy for it's size. A magnet won't stick to it but there looks to be some iron in it, guessing too little to detect. Is it too small for testing?

I have a Tejon with the concentric coil for about a year and it has brought new life to old grounds that I have hit with my AT Pro. Within a week I found a hefty gold ring from the 1930's with 7 sapphires and 4 diamonds mixed in with square and round tabs in a local park. The machine does take some getting used to and learning curve is a little more than the typical VDI machines when distinguishing the good from the bad. It will excel in trashy areas and can snipe out good targets with a clean signal amongst the trash once you know the unit. The silent search is nice and the user can look around and enjoy the day rather than keep looking at a display. Don't get me wrong, I do like my AT Pro and it serves me well but the Tesoro won me over.

A couple years ago I got back into detecting. I retired my 1990's Bounty Hunter and snagged an AT Pro and last year picked up a Tesoro Tejon which quickly became my favorite machine. I stumbled on this site when I heard rumors of Tesoro possible shutdown as I was looking for a Sand Shark. Nice forum, has some nice info here and people seem pleasant. Thanks Ken